Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a type of atomic emission spectroscopy which uses a highly energetic laser pulse as the excitation source. The laser pulse generates a high temperature micro-plasma on the surface of the sample. After this excitation, light that is characteristic of the elemental composition of the sample is emitted and analyzed within a spectrometer. LIBS has become a very popular analytical method in view of some of its unique features such as applicability to any type of sample, practically no sample preparation, remote sensing capability, and speed of analysis.
Traditional LIBS instruments utilize high power Q-switched lasers with laser pulse energy on the level of several tens or several hundreds of milli-joules (mJ). In addition, a long focal length spectrograph is generally employed to produce the required wavelength resolution. As a result, traditional LIBS instruments have large power consumption and physical dimension, which limits their capability for field operations.